A Night of Beer and Cheese at Scion Restaurant

If you haven’t got anything planned for Wednesday, May 7, then you will want to purchase tickets for Beer & Cheese: An Evening with Funkwerks, Odell, & Right Proper, which will be held at 5pm at Scion’s Restaurant in Dupont Circle (2100 P Street, N.W.). Funkwerks and Odell are out-of-market breweries, but both have been gracious enough to each provide five special drafts for the event, all of which are infrequently available in DC. While Right Proper will not be featuring any of its brews, ambassadors of the brewery are supplying the cheese for the pairings.

Beer isn’t typically the beverage of choice when it comes to cheese tasting. Because of its fruity flavors and acidic undertones, wine is usually sipped on while sampling different cheeses, which is why Marks and Spencer arranges hampers with classic red Bordeaux and farmhouse matured cheddar. Astonishingly, the bitterness of beers aligns with the saltiness of Gouda and Havarti. While beers are primarily bitter, they share similar undertones with various cheeses: they both have nutty, tangy, floral and earthy flavors. Textures aren’t far off from each other either, as the pairings can be smooth and creamy or dry and sharp. Even in times that there are no complements, “there is a delightful contrast; the sweetness of some beers is an ideal foil for cheese’s saltiness. And beer’s scrubbing bubbles work to whisk away the mouth-coating richness of cheese,” as eloquently put by Serious Eats’ Michael Agner.

In a way, a beer and cheese event doesn’t have the same level of … pretentiousness from a wine and cheese tasting. It appeals to a greater range of patrons, and generally, beer has a quality of relaxation that is lacking from wine. Huffington Post‘s infographic is quite helpful in educating beginners with the basic pairings, a tool that may come in handy when attending the Beer & Cheese event.